Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1992
Abstract
One of the most compelling aspects of Mari Sandoz' biography of her father, OldJules, is her account of the violence that Jules Sandoz inflicted upon his family. Jules Sandoz had left his native Switzerland in a fit of temper and ended up in northwestern Nebraska in 1884. Well educated and from a well-to-do professional family, he was nevertheless a character by any standards. He had a violent temper matched by unflagging paranoia and contentiousness. He was remarkable for personal filth and filthy stories. But he was also a gregarious center of community life, an outstanding horticulturalist, a voracious reader with cultivated musical tastes,and a tireless correspondent. He married four times; he deserted his first wife; the second and third left him. His fourth wife, Mary, bore him six children and stayed with him until his death in 1928. Jules physically abused at least three of his wives and the three oldest children. Mari, his eldest child, wrote Old Jules partly as a response to his deathbed request that she "write of his struggles as a locator, a builder of communities, a bringer of fruit to the Panhandle." In writing that story she also wrote of the dark side of Jules Sandoz. 1
Comments
Published in Great Plains Quarterly 12:1 (Winter 1992). Copyright © 1992 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.